Monday, February 3, 2020

Blue Pages 3.3 — Norbert Kovacs

. . .


FROM THE ELEMENTS
by Norbert Kovacs


     The earth rises against the man as he takes his hard steps. Rock erupts in huge shafts
before his feet so he cannot walk straight. The man cries in frustration, "An unfair land!"
A grinding noise drowns his words and the cries of his thousand scattered companions.
The sound whirs and sings in his ear.

     Each time the earth rises at him, the man falls. When he stands again, he is smaller in
size, lesser. The man collapses several times. The ground is hard and rough on each
occasion. He kicks at it in anger. However, he comes not to fear his falls nor losing height
and weight. A large body, he finds, is no asset when tumbling to the ground.

     The man breaks some body part--an arm, his jaw, a rib--whenever he meets the
charging earth. He cannot ignore the damage, so mends himself. He binds the broken
bone. He suffers casts on his limbs. His newly mended body is loose-jointed. His torso
joggles when he walks. His hip bounces. The man takes it in stride. He becomes like an
ant on the march, always shuffling; he nears an ant in size, too, as he shrinks with each
fall.

     The man walks without any belongings; he has interest no longer for the many he'd
had. He passes freely among the thousand small clumps to which the land has subsided.
His old comrades, the giants, have perished; their dull, heavy corpses strew the earth like
monuments. The man passes by them. He leaves no trace of a path; he believes he should
not mark the earth with his transient steps anyway.




Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. His stories have appeared in Westview, Gravel, STORGY, Corvus Review, and The Write Launch. Norbert's website is www.norbertkovacs.net.





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